Dalston’s Soda Soft Drink Product Photography
Product shots of all six flavours of Dalstons Soda
There’s nothing more rewarding that being asked to work again for a brand you’ve worked with before. I feel very lucky to have done several different briefs for Dalstons Soda, but this was the first.
This one was a ‘simple’ product photography shoot. I say simple in inverted commas as just because the concept is simple, it' doesn’t necessarily mean it’s simple to pull off. The shots of a company’s primary products are super important, and this is the same for big established brands and small start-ups alike.
This means it has to be perfect – perfect focus, exposure, colour, contrast, shape of light… everything. Product photography is an exercise in photographic technique, so if you want your soft drink product photographs to sell your stuff, book me today!
Step 1: Shooting the cans
Dalston’s said they wanted their cans to feel really premium, like racing cars, and gave me a few references of product shots they liked and wanted to emulate. Some of these were other cans of soft drinks, some were cans of beer, there was variety. This was really helpful and it’s something I always recommend, to make sure we’re speaking the same visual language. They also warned me that the cans were shiny and this had caused problems with product shots they had done in the past. I reassured them this was no problem, I can handle it 😉
We needed to create two looks, one plain photograph of the soft drink can, and another where the can had a cold, crisp, refreshing appeal.
The real trick when it comes to this kind of product photography is creating an image that is both true to the real product, but also shows it looking amazing. Like I said above, this means shaping the light just right to make sure all the key details of the product are perfectly lit, but also making sure there’s good contrast to make the product look three dimensional, even on a 2d screen. For these Dalstons Soda soft drinks cans this was no different.
Tech stuff
Preparing the product: to help deal with the shine, I gave the cans are spray with some anti-reflective spray. This creates a kind of diffusive layer on the surface of the can itself. This diffuses the light that hits that can and softens reflections. Amazingly handy little tool.
The anti-reflection spray also helps make the can look cold, as it’s like having condensation on the can, but to really sell the effect it needs some visible water droplets. This is a mixture of 50:50 vegetable glycerin and water, carefully and delicately misted onto the product.
Lighting: Diffusion diffusion diffusion. And negative fill. Lots of both!
Presentation
A cool thing about shooting products in this cut-out white style is that it’s very versatile. If you want to be able to use your product shots in all-kinds of media later on you can do this. One thing I like to do for my clients as a little bonus is give them their product shots on a colour background with a shadow painted in on photoshop. It looks super premium and is a really effective way to add some value to your shoot.
Here’s how that looks:
Final word
Good product photography makes your stuff look awesome!
Check out this other work for Dalstons: Dalstons Natural Ingredients
And some more! Dalstons Soda Music Photographs
And see more of my portfolio.
If you are looking for a professional product photographer Get in touch now!